Business Digest December 7, 2012

Spirit Hounds LLC opened Spirit Hound Distillers at 4196 Ute Highway, east of Lyons. It is making and bottling small batches of gin, whiskey and vodka on a still made by Craig Engelhorn, the company’s distiller. Spirit Hound features a tasting room with seating for 40 and bar and cocktail service featuring distillery products.

Brainfood Bookstore has opened inside the Old Town Marketplace, 332 Main St., in Longmont. The store, which deals primarily with local and independent authors, is owned by John Haworth and managed by Kimberly Longhofer.

Oskar Blues Brewery LLC will open Chuburger, Feb. 1, at 1225 Ken Pratt Blvd., Longmont.. The 3,500-square-foot “fast-craft-casual” eatery is Oskar Blues fourth restaurant in Colorado. The space previously housed a Cajun restaurant, Catfish Curly’s. Chuburger will feature locally grown food, including beef from cows raised by Oskar Blues at its Hops & Heifers Farm. The restaurant shares part of its name with Old Chub, a Scottish style ale brewed by Oskar Blues.

BRIEFS

Americans spent a record $451 million on sports, fitness and recreation-related products and services in October, according to Boulder-based Leisure Trends Group LLC, an outdoor research firm. The monthly total was 7 percent higher than October 2011.

Boulder-based 8030 Companies entered a joint venture with Juhl Wind Inc. to buy wind farms and other clean-energy assets. The agreement between 8030 and Pipestone, Minnesota-based Juhl Wind Inc. (OTCQB: JUHL) helps Juhl expand outside of its current Midwest market. Financial terms of the joint venture were not disclosed. The two companies have been working together since 2011 and are looking to buy wind farms that generate less than 100 megawatts of power.

Broomfield-based Accera Inc. has launched a clinical trial to look at the effects of the research drug AC-1204 on patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Accera plans to enroll 400 Alzheimer’s patients at 60 locations around the nation to participate in the six-month trial, according to a press statement. AC-1204 is designed to improve cognitive function in patients with mild to moderate forms of Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, the company said in the press statement.

The Creative Alliance, based in Lafayette, designed an aviation safety poster for its client Global Aerospace Inc. of Parsippany, New Jersey, a provider of aerospace insurance products and services.

An athlete hanging by his feet from a line strung across a Utah canyon may be the image that takes a new online video viral from adventure sport company Gibbon Slacklines. The video received 7,000 hits in its first day posted on YouTube, said Emilio Torres, vice president for sales and marketing at Boulder-based Canaima Outdoor Inc., doing business as Gibbon Slacklines. Athletes in the lifestyle video walk a slackline — a tightrope-looking product — strung across a canyon near Salt Lake City. They compare falling off the slackline to the setbacks people face in life. Gibbon Slacklines plans to use the video for a 2013 advertising campaign.

A $1.7 million insider-trading case filed against seven Celgene Corp. employees started when the biotechnology company purchased Boulder-based pharmaceutical company Pharmion Corp. in 2008, according to federal documents. Pharmion (former Nasdaq symbol: PHRM) was sold to Summit, New Jersey-based Celgene Corp. (Nasdaq: CELG) for $2.9 billion in cash and stock in November 2008. John Lazorchak, 42, and several of his high school friends used non-public information to make money in stock trades in the Pharmion purchase and other more recent Celgene purchases, according to a federal complaint filed Nov. 19 in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. Former Pharmion chief executive Patrick Mahaffy started Clovis Oncology Inc. (Nasdaq: CLVS) in Boulder in 2009 with other former Pharmion executives.

The city of Longmont’s sales- and use-tax collections increased 0.5 percent in October, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the city finance department’s latest report. Longmont collected $4,166,626 in October, compared with $4,147,620 in October 2011. The collection in October represents sales made in September. Sales-tax collections increased by 4.8 percent from the same month the year before, and use-tax collections increased by 5.4 percent. Total sales- and use-tax collections for the year to date increased 3.5 percent compared with the same period in 2011, according to the report.

Longmont-based Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), a provider of SAN storage solutions, was reappointment to the National Server and Storage Agreement, a university and college procurement framework. . Introduced by the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium, the framework offers all universities, HE/FE colleges, and affiliated member institutions the opportunity to procure from accredited suppliers, which have already pre-tendered in the knowledge that pricing is competitive and without the requirement to go through time-consuming international EU tendering processes.

EARNINGS

Soy beverage company WhiteWave Foods Co. reported a 13 percent increase in revenue in its quarterly earnings report, driven by sales of products such as Silk PureAlmond soy milk. Net sales at Broomfield-based WhiteWave Foods Co. (NYSE: WWAV) rose to $575 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared with $510 million for the same quarter a year earlier. At the same time, income declined 10 percent to $43 million from $48 million a year earlier, because of higher operating costs and expenses.

CONTRACTS

Boulder-based Comer & Associates LLC has been retained by Alternative Home Health Care of Fort Lauderdale, Florida to assess and improve marketing and sales systems. AHHC is a supplier of home health-care services in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Comer & Associates provides management solutions.

GRANTS

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, University of Colorado-Boulder and Colorado State University in Fort Collins each will receive a grant from the Department of Energy to pursue research projects that have the potential to produce game-changing breakthroughs in energy technology. CSU will receive more than $2 million to develop a system to rapidly introduce new genetic traits into crops that cannot be engineered currently. NREL in Golden will receive $800,000 to develop a new approach to enhance the efficiency of low-cost plastic solar cells using specially engineered photonic structures to capture a larger part of the solar spectrum. NREL also will receive $890,000 to develop a solar thermal electric generator to directly convert heat from concentrated sunlight to electricity using a new generation of thermoelectric materials that can operate at higher temperatures and efficiencies. CU-Boulder will receive $380,000 to use nanotechnology to improve the structure of gas-to-liquids catalysts, increasing surface area and improving heat transfer compared with current catalysts.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Kevin and Chanel Peed acquired the Great Harvest Bread Co. shop at The Village shopping center in Boulder from Scott and Sally Screevy, who owned the shop for 29 years.

Synergy Resources Corp. plans to wrap up its purchase of Greeley-based Orr Energy LLC in early December after putting together an expanded $47 million line of credit from local banks, the company said. Platteville-based oil and gas exploration and production company Synergy (NYSE MKT: SYRG) can borrow up to $150 million under terms of a new agreement with Denver-based Community Banks of Colorado and Colorado Business Bank and Houston-based Amegy Bank National Association, the company said in a press statement. Synergy plans to use the money to buy Orr Energy in Greeley, and to fund part of its 2013 capital budget, the company said. Synergy plans to pay $42 million – $30 million in cash and $12 million in stock – for Orr Energy.Orr Energy has 36 wells producing oil and gas in the Watternburg Field of the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which spans across Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska.

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